Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia on Wednesday finally laid out his proposal for a voting rights bill and, frankly, it provided the outlines for what can still result in very substantive and meaningful voting reforms. Perhaps most importantly, Manchin endorsed a ban on partisan gerrymandering—the beating heart of Democrats’ signature voting rights bill, known as the For The People Act or H.R.1/S.1. Yes, there’s still the problem of beating the 60-vote threshold in the Senate, but let’s set that aside for a second.

Critically, on the House side, Speaker Nancy Pelosi indicated that Manchin’s proposed changes to the House-passed For The People Act are viable in the lower chamber, saying “there is a path” for a revised bill. 

House Democrats can’t afford to lose more than several votes on any bill to reach 216 with their razor-thin majority. In March, H.R.1 cleared the chamber by less than a handful of votes, 220-210, with one Democrat joining 209 Republicans in voting against the bill. 

Pelosi sounded a sober but hopeful note Wednesday after news broke of Manchin’s proposal. “I haven’t given up on him,” she told reporters of Manchin. “We must pass the legislation, it’s not about Democrats or Republicans, it’s about our democracy. And the clock is ticking on our democracy when it comes to the sanctity of the vote. So I’m optimistic and hopeful.” 

In the Senate, Majority Leader Chuck Schumer began laying the groundwork to start floor debate next week on the current version of For The People Act. The bill can then be amended with any revisions Democrats settle on based on Manchin’s proposals.

“This legislation could act as the vehicle for the voting rights legislation being discussed with Senator Manchin,” a spokesperson told Politico’s Burgess Everett.

All of these developments represent positive movement on a crucial bill for the future of our democracy. Taken on its face, Manchin’s proposal preserves some of the most important parts of H.R.1 though certainly not all of them. Eliminating gerrymandering would give our democracy a fighting chance. Mandated early voting of at least 15 consecutive days including two weekends would help ensure voting is more accessible to working people nationwide. Automatic voter registration through the DMV with an opt-out option is a provision Democrats have wanted for years. Those elements in Manchin’s proposal alone would make the voting rights bill incredibly substantive and worthwhile.

Manchin’s support for requiring voter IDs isn’t ideal, but his suggestion that something akin to a utility bill could suffice makes it a more livable and achievable bar for most people. His support for allowing voter purges is even less ideal, but if the tradeoff is inclusion of something along the lines of a nationwide motor voter mandate, that’s still a net-plus. 

There’s more tradeoffs where those came from, but overall, this would still be a bill worth fighting for and, if it weren’t, Pelosi likely wouldn’t see a path for it in the lower chamber. 

The other benefit of many of Manchin’s provisions is how broadly popular they are, according to polling from Crooked Media/Data for Progress. Just to cite a few:

Nonpartisan redistricting: 74% support, 11% oppose
15 days early voting: 68% support, 19% oppose
Automatic voter registration: 59% support, 29% oppose

Public opinion isn’t going to make or break this bill, but it sure as heck helps. When Republicans line up against it, Democrats will be able to pound them over the head with provisions that poll at 60% or higher.

Which brings us back to the filibuster and the 10 Senate GOP votes necessary to get any voting rights bill over the finish line. Those 10 votes don’t exist, and there’s no reason pretending they do. 

But what is maybe most important at this stage of a multi-stage battle is getting Joe Manchin—the lone Democratic holdout on S.1—deeply invested in a voting rights bill that may not be perfect, but that will certainly help protect our elections from partisan power-grabs while making the ballot box far more accessible to more Americans.

The bottom line is, we need Manchin to be invested in this fight. And if it takes adopting the vast majority of his proposals to do that, so be it—many of them are actually very good. But getting Manchin on board so he can shop this bill around only to discover that 10 Republicans will never come to the table is a necessary part of reaching the next stage of this fight.

And the next stage will be convincing Manchin that our democracy is so urgently desperate for these reforms that the only reasonable choice is finding a one-time workaround for the filibuster. As Pelosi said, the clock is ticking on our democracy.